Tunisia: a reality check on women‘s rights in an abusive state

The victim filed a complaint against the three police officers only to be charged with “intentional indecent behaviour” based on the testimony of the offenders.

Unwilling to hide and do nothing, Meriem
refused to be silenced and spoke out in a shaky but loud voice against her merciless
rapists who stripped her of her dignity as a human being.Fighting back seems to be a costly endeavour
in a patriarchal society, as she then underwent what could be described as a
second violation at the hands both of Tunisian society and the legal system.

Early last month, three policemen
approached Meriem and her fiancée and pulled them from the car. While two
policemen took the woman to a remote place and raped her 3 times, the other
policeman took the man to the ATM machine to withdraw some money as a bribe to
let them go, as the 27 years old woman declared in several local media outlets.

The victim filed a complaint against
the three police officers only to be charged with “intentional indecent behaviour”
based on the testimony of the offenders. If proved guilty the woman and her fiancé
may face up to 6 months in jail. Several cases of sexual violence went unreported
when Ben Ali was in power, since Tunisians were well aware of the corruption in
the judicial system and feared shame in a society that considers virginity a
prerequisite to being a morally upright woman.

When news of the rape incident went
viral on social media, the case received nationwide attention. The prosecution
of Meriem split public opinion into two camps, supporters who denounced the proceeding
online and in a storm of protest on Tuesday outside a Tunisian court where the
victim and her companion were interrogated. The other camp blamed the victim of
the rape; they deemed her responsible for losing her honour.

Amnesty international has called the
authorities to drop charges against the couple. Hassiba
Hadj Sahraoui the deputy Middle East and North Africa programme director at
Amnesty International said, “At best, charging the victim of a rape by police
officers instead of protecting her from intimidation and stigma highlights the
deep flaws of the Tunisian law and criminal justice system." Unfortunately
the laws that govern criminal justice in post- revolutionary Tunisia are deeply
rooted. The independence of the Judicial Branch still remains a matter of
suspicion under the rule of the troika.

Tunisia was a police state, thus
police officers were given a green light to repress citizens in order to
maintain the status quo. Tunisian police officers got involved in torture, rape
and several ugly practices against the Tunisian populace while being immune
from the rule of law. Reform inside the security system seems to be slow and
inefficient. The current leadership have
failed to address the problem of police brutality and sexual violence. Rape as
a means of repression par excellence is still practiced in the so-called new
bastion of democracy. The crackdown on a peaceful protest on April 9 2012,
which marks the Day of Martyrs in Tunisia made me feel that Ben Ali was still
with us. In September, a man accused of robbery was beaten to death.

Ironically, women‘s rights in
Tunisia have only come to the forefront of debate inside the first
democratically electedConstituent
Assembly with the introduction of an
article in the draft of the new constitution that has now been reversed. Had
this not taken place, the equality enshrined in
our constitution six decades ago would have been replaced by the concept of
complementarity between men and women. Women in Tunisia today will not tolerate
moving backward, for they have since 1956 enjoyed the Code of Personal status,
a legal code that recognizes the position of women as equal partners to men. Unfortunately,
the laws of the Code of Personal Status are not fully in practice due to the
traditions that favour men over women. Still, women in Tunisia do have more
rights than their counterparts in the Middle Eastern region.

Women in Tunisia
are still victims of blatant discriminatory laws that do not recognize for
instance marital rape or emotional abuse, and proceedings against the accused
are still dropped if he agrees to marry the victim. The attitude of the
ministry of interior and the justice ministry suggests that rape and sexual
assault will further flourish in our society as long as the victim is
humiliated, stigmatized and ashamed for reporting the incident of rape.

Tunisian president
Marzouki had an audience with the rape victim on Thursday and expressed utter
sympathy with her upon listening to the details of the case, a move that is
somehow reminiscent of the visit Ben Ali paid almost two years ago to Mohammed
Bouazizi, the guy who immolated himself to protest against injustice in Tunisia.
Once again – it is a cosmetic move by a head of the state lacking any robust plan
to tackle the systemic violations of human rights in the new era of Tunisia.

If there is any
hope of alleviating the plight of women victims of sexual assault in Tunisia,
the whole society must push for an amendment of the legal system to defend
women’ s rights, full humanity and dignity. In a country that witnessed a
popular uprising and which claims a transition towards democracy, fundamental
change in the status of women is inevitable.

About the author

Meriem Dhaouadi is a youth activist working to promote civil and human rights in Tunisia.

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